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It will be interesting to see how human soldiers will react to the introduction of autonomous allies. They already have trust issues with unmanned systems [0],

• gaius 9y ago
  But surely drones aren’t unmanned? Just their pilot is elsewhere. Curious as to what the real root of this is.
  • jackvalentine 9y ago
    I suppose unmanned in that context means 'not sharing the risk of the battlefield by being there' or something.
  • goatsi 9y ago
    The focus seems to be on the fact that the pilot is elsewhere. From the article: >Instead, the trust issue was a human issue. Not once did any of our respondents refer to a drone pilot as a human. Instead, drones were discussed in abstract terms that explicitly avoided any reference to a human controlling the machine. UAVs were “robots” or “machines” whose “operators,” as one respondent put it, were playing a video game “a world away.” This is despite the fact that most of them knew there was a human controlling the drone, and some even knew these pilots personally. Yet across the JTAC community, we heard a familiar narrative: drone pilots were coffee-drinking gamers whose distance from the battlefield severed their emotional connection to friendly ground troops. For instance, one of the JTACs explained that he preferred manned aircraft because their pilots “are in the fight, not just sipping a latte playing a video game.”
• Eridrus 9y ago
  That's an interesting link, but I think it's sort of the wrong question to ask. The last question of 10 unmanned vs 1 manned is closer to the the real question, but I think these operators are not used to making tough resource decisions because our military is so over funded.
• fapjacks 9y ago
  I think once autonomous systems demonstrate combat effectiveness, they will be integrated just fine. As an infantry veteran of many tours, I can tell you there will always be a preference for other people who are closer to the fight, in any situation, both on and off the battlefield. We like to stick to our own, because the 90% of the military that doesn't actually do the fighting is like a whole other stupid universe (about which I have many shocking and hilarious stories). So of course if you ask someone to choose between a human in an Apache on standby or a human in Las Vegas controlling a drone loitering over the city, you're going to get a preference for the former. But if these autonomous systems are framed as pieces of equipment augmenting the infantry soldier and not as some kind of replacement, they will be quickly assimilated into the fight and this won't really be an issue. I mean of course as the technology improves and it becomes a reliable, effective force multiplier and not a complex piece of shit that makes your job harder (or your position easier to find, or your life more dangerous, etc etc). Framing it as a replacement for something that humans already do pretty well is the wrong way to do it, however, and I'm sure in that case it will always face stiff resistance from infantry soldiers.